


a little death

by hatsuji (pyxz)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: :X, Other, mention of murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-14 03:01:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11774142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyxz/pseuds/hatsuji
Summary: Chanyeol kills to be with the one he loves.





	a little death

November 13, 2008.

Liver complications. Late transactions. Hospital waiting rooms too cold for hope to live in.

He is sitting on a plastic bench with his dad’s new rubber slippers clutched between his hands.

He bought them on his way to the hospital. Delirious in the way the loved ones of dead men are, when he woke up that morning, he felt great. He felt that everything would be great, that his father would be awake, that despite the tubes stuck into his throat, they would get to walk out in the garden for a few minutes. Hopeless in the way the loved ones of the helpless are, he thought his father would need slippers for that. He thought his father would be alive for that.

The air is nipping frostbites onto his fingers and he’s ignoring all the warning signs: the gray in the sky, the ice in the air.

“Please, don’t take him,” he begs. “Please, just one more year. Just a few more days. Just… anything... please—“

“I’m sorry,” Death answers. Chanyeol looks up, face soaked with tears, moving his gaze from the blood on the table to Death’s endless eyes.

Death covers his shaking fingers with a hand as warm as his father’s and as cold as winter. “I know this is difficult,” Death speaks, voice familiar, as it never does and as it never is. “But you’ll see him again one day.”

Chanyeol bites his lip and hesitantly lifts his hand. He watches as Death takes his father’s soul, as the line goes flat, as the whole world stops.

“You wanted to take a walk with him, didn’t you?”

“…”

“Well, come on. Follow me.”

Chanyeol follows the black hooded figure and walks out to the green and gray of the day. Death takes his hand, and for a moment he feels as if he has left his body. For a moment, he feels as if he is looking at himself from a place outside of himself.

Time is frozen, he thinks Death tells him this. (“I have distracted Time for you.”)  
“Chanyeol,” comes his father’s voice. And sentiment finds him with arms around his old man’s neck and tears soaking a hospital gown he has never seen so clean.

“Dad,” he sobs uncontrollably, shaking and laughing and crying. He forgets about Death. He forgets about Time.

(The nurses see the deceased man’s son wandering the hospital gardens alone, speaking to the air, holding onto nothing—they bow their heads and turn away.)

 

**

His best friend dies in a car crash. Chanyeol was the one driving, and it’s a very small town, so he finds himself being held by the same cold hospital air that had been there for him at the time his father passed.

“I didn’t get to thank you last time,” he greets Death like an old friend. Death smiles, sending chills down Chanyeol’s bones and electricity through his spine. Death walks from the hallway into the waiting room, places a hand on Chanyeol’s face, and Chanyeol remembers this feeling—the cold and the warmth of it, the sensation of drowning and breathing overwhelming his lungs all at the same time.

Bliss. He feels blissful. He feels blissful enough to forget his guilt.

Death places a hand over his heart. “I know this feeling,” Death says. “Most people are filled with this when I arrive… when a person they love dies.”

“Love?” Chanyeol says thoughtlessly.

“I can’t stay for long.”

 

**

Death always disappears before Chanyeol can say anything, so he thinks they need more time. He thinks he’ll take matters into his own hands and find Time himself so he is twenty-years-old, fresh out of college, wrapping a shiny new tie around his neck and kicking off the chair from underneath him.

When he opens his eyes, the pain in his lungs and his throat is gone. He feels at peace, he feels normal. He feels better than he has ever felt before.

“Chanyeol,” Death whispers sadly, caressing his cheek more gently, thumbing over a tiny scar just below his eye as if Death wished it was as easy to remove affection as it was to inflict it.  
Chanyeol smiles brightly, and Death can’t understand why.

“You’ll take me now,” he beams. “We’ll have all the time in the world.”

Death frowns grimly, and Chanyeol can’t understand why.

“I… It doesn’t work like that, Chanyeol. If I take you to the afterlife, I would need to pass judgment on you. I can’t be sure where you’ll end up. I can’t be sure if I’ll see you again.”

(Somehow the world is uglier the second time around.)

**

A year of lonesomeness becomes too much to bear. No soft whisper or loving touch can cure him of the sickness that wishes to decay his soul,

and he wishes so much for Death.

Puzzle pieces tell him that Death only comes at a certain time, so Chanyeol stares intently at his watch until the ticking of the hands is the only sound he hears. No heartbeat, no breathing, no screaming and struggling.

“Love…” Death speaks as he collects the pieces, confused that love can be so familiar yet so unrecognizable in the form it has taken in Chanyeol’s heart. “Your heart is racing with it. Were you very close to this woman?”

“I feel it for you,” Chanyeol says, ignoring the pain of tearing skin; consequences all but trivial in the grand scheme of being in love.

“I feel it for you too,” Death tells him, “but I’m hurting you. I can’t stay for long.

**

Chanyeol begins walking backwards, collecting the seconds instead of counting the minutes. He can never think too much of the broken bones and the bloody floors and the dead bodies when he is always looking to the sky, always waiting for his love to come back.

Outside, its cold and the town drowns in panic. A serial killer is on the loose. No pattern—no one is safe. No clues, no leads, no sense.

Inside, its warm and Death holds his hand until his skin begins to burn—but Chanyeol is still always the last one to pull away.


End file.
